System requirements for Office 2010

From the outset, a key design criterion for Office 2010 was to minimize the need for additional system resources. A comparison of the system requirements for recent Office versions is shown in the following table.

Component
Office 2003 Office 2007 Office 2010
Computer and processor
233 MHz
500 MHz
500 MHz

Memory (RAM)
128 MB
256 MB
256 MB

Hard disk
400 MB
2 GB
3 GB

Display
800 × 600
1024 × 768
1024 × 576*


*All display requirements for Office 2010 are designed to allow for good performance on both portable and desktop computers.

Processor and RAM requirements for Office 2010 are the same as for the 2007 Office system. Therefore, if your computer meets the 2007 Office system requirements, you can run Office 2010.

The recommended hard disk space has increased with Office 2010 because of new features, Office-wide ribbon implementation, and in some cases different applications that are included in the Office suites. For example, Microsoft Office Professional 2010 includes OneNote, whereas Microsoft Office Professional 2007 did not. Also, the system requirements are rounded up to the nearest 0.5 GB to be conservative. For example, if we measure an application’s required hard disk space to be 1.99 GB, our recommendation will be 2.5 GB. Our hard disk system requirements are intentionally larger than the actual disk space usage of the software.

A graphics processor will help increase the performance of certain features, such as drawing charts in Microsoft Excel 2010 or transitions, animations, and video integration in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010. Use of a graphics processor with Office 2010 requires a Microsoft DirectX 9.0c compliant graphics processor with 64-MB video memory. These processors were widely available in 2007, and most computers available today include a graphics processor that meets or exceeds this standard. However, if you or your users do not have a graphics processor, you can still run Office 2010.

When you choose the product suite or individual program to deploy in the environment, evaluate the computer before deployment to ensure it meets the minimum operating system requirements.

Reference:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624351.aspx

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/microsoft-office-2010-system-requirements-HA101810407.aspx